Thomas Duston was said to be a man of good character and unshakeable courage. He settled his family at the western frontier outpost apart from the village. In March of 1697 he was preparing a distant field for the spring planting when he spied a party of men edging gingerly out from the woods in an area just west of the little River. The intruders moved stealthily closer until the faces became so visible that he could see the war paint. Instantly he grabbed his musket and hastened for home. He rode by horseback intending to intercept the Indian attack and safeguard his family to the protective quarters of a nearby garrison. But the assault was swift and in this moment of crisis Thomas made a decision to usher seven of his eight children to safety while leaving behind his infant daughter and wife Hannah who was inside the house and too weakened from her recent birthing to join the escape. Duston was fired upon and without returning the volley gallantly kept his attackers at bay by simply pointing and threatening his loaded musket as he led his children to the garrison of Onisephorus Marsh halfway up Pecker’s Hill. Meanwhile the marauding Indians set upon Hannah, her infant daughter and nurse Mary Neff. The child was dashed against an apple tree and killed instantly as Hannah and the nurse were taken captive. The retreating war party had slaughtered or captured thirty-nine persons and left behind nine burning homes.

The beleaguered women endured a forced journey northward to Pennacook, with a young boy named Samuel Lennardson who had been captured in an earlier raid on Worcester. They were separated from the other captives and placed under the watchful eye of a family of two men, three women and seven children. As the weeks passed Hannah came to understand enough of their language to realize that Canada was their destination. Fearing the worst she began to devise a plan of escape and enlisted her fellow captives. Tradition has it that the boy had been with this family long enough to be trusted. At Hannah’s urging he asked one of the men where to strike a man to kill him with a tomahawk and also how to scalp his victim. The Indian must have thought he was simply a curious boy as he described the murderous tactics in detail.

The Indian family apparently did not regard their captives as dangerous and thought they were too timid to risk an escape so they slept each night without restraining or guarding their prisoners. Hannah’s rage over the death of her infant daughter Martha, however, must have been overwhelming. She waited until all were asleep, picked up a weapon belonging to one of her captors and struck deadly blows to each of them with such force that most were dispatched without alarm. A wounded squaw and a young boy escaped into the darkness while Hannah completed her grim task by scalping her victims and placing the gruesome booty in a linen cloth that had been looted from her house. The scalps would bear witness to her story if and when they returned home safely. Assiduously they made their way to the canoes, scuttling all but the one in which they made their way down river. With a dead captor’s musket in hand they were watchful for passing war parties or likely avengers who might be in hot pursuit once the alarm was sounded.

Hannah Bradley was among the other captives who were separated from Hannah Duston and Mary Neff. She was present at the natives’ camp when the badly wounded squaw and boy arrived to tell of the death of ten Indians at the hands Duston and Neff. She later told of the fierce agitation that spread among the Abenakis and the party of warriors that gave chase. But Hannah Duston was determined and resolute. She ordered that one companion remain awake while the other two slept and avoided most open daylight passages. After a long struggle they made their way home to Haverhill and to their astonished survivors who were still mourning their certain loss.

Regarded by many for her strength and courage Hannah Duston was the first American woman to have a statue dedicated in her memory and to this day the only North American woman to have two, the second one standing on an island near Pennacook, New Hampshire. However, the morality of the acts committed by Hannah Duston have been hotly debated throughout the passage of time by notable historians including Cotton Mather, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry David Thoreau.

Hannah Bradley and the Scalding Soap

Other isolated attacks occurred with little or no warning and created a constant anxiety to the inhabitants of Haverhill until the winter months when the Indians would retreat to Canada. This caused a regrettable relaxation as on the eighth day in February 1704 a party of six Indians attacked the unguarded garrison of Joseph Bradley in West Parish while he was away. A pregnant Hannah Bradley was boiling soap when the invasion occurred and having already suffered the indignities of captivity after the Duston affair she was not about to be taken without a fight. She poured a ladle of the scalding soap across the head of one of the intruders before being overpowered and taken captive once again. Her defiance was not without repercussion. During her journey north she gave birth to a child that was treated with severe cruelty by their captors who placed embers in the baby’s mouth when it cried and used their knives to scratch wounds to its head. Finally when Bradley left the child unguarded to wander a short distance, she was repulsed and distraught to discover the infant impaled on a pike when she returned.

Once in Canada Hannah Bradley was sold and indentured to a French family who treated her with kindness. Joseph Bradley learned of his wife’s whereabouts in March 1705 and traveled by foot to Montreal where he paid for her release. They sailed to Boston and she returned safely to her home in Haverhill more than a year after the ordeal began.